Who Coined “Early Voting” Term :: Charter'97 :: News

Official media are widely advertising the early voting campaign. And zealously safeguard the idea from opposition’s attacks. They claim that the practice is popular in Estonia, Britain and States, which are considered the citadels of democracy. Moreover, in some western societies one can vote even through mail.

However, things aren’t really getting the way they describe. The officials are cunning. They indeed have early voting abroad (not everywhere though), but it is always seriously restricted. For instance, one is supposed to present there the document, which confirms that a citizen leaves on a working trip on the day of the voting. But Belarus demonstrates complete liberalism in the matter, proposing to the citizens to feel free to vote before time.

Official commentators keep silent about one detail. In the democratic societies the early voting turnout fluctuates between 1-3%. If the figure gets over that level, it is considered to be anomaly there. In this case, the authorities can be suspected of pressurizing the electorate and machinations.

At our present-day elections, the figures already climbed over that number – 1,8% after the first voting day and 5,2% after the second. If this tendency continues, we may get at the end some 20-25% of early voters.

By the way, at the presidential elections 2001 14,7% of voters cast their ballot-sheets before time. That’s almost exactly the difference between the number of votes, received by Lukashenko at the previous presidential ballot – 54% (according to after-voting polls) - and the official outcomes – 76%. At the parliamentary elections 2000 they had constituencies where over a half of voters voted before schedule. Do you really think that those crowds rushed to the ballot-stations on their own? Or may be they had been driven by the executive for the sake of democracy?

Even if we imagine that they will not substitute ballot-sheets at the elections, the enforced voting by itself, stretching for almost a week, will at least enable the executive to avoid second round of voting and repeated elections even at places where this would be quite natural due to the voters’ passiveness. So, we can state with full assurance that the involuntary early voting is part of the manipulation campaign.

Meantime, the national electoral fun is getting underway, while the early voting statistics goes uphill. At the end the authorities will use these votes as it pleases them.